Chapter 9 Lab 9: Wireless Communication III: Superheterodyne AM Receiver 9.1 Introduction The superheterodyne receiver is the basis of virtually every AM radio available today. Having been exposed to some fundamental aspects of AM communication electronics is the previous lab (Lab 7), we are now ready build the more sophisticated superheterodyne. In contrast to the simple radio from Lab 7, the superheterodyne has the advantage of NOT requiring a TUNABLE, a very narrow, bandpass filter. The superheterodyne still requires a narrow bandpass filter, however, it has advantage that this narrow bandpass is set at a FIXED frequency. This is a great advantage since it is relatively simple to construct a high-Q filter at a single resonant frequency, but difficult to construct one with a variable resonance. To achieve this, the superheterodyne takes advantage of a basic trigonometric identity. While this result is relatively simple, its application revolutionized radio communication. 9.2 Superheterodyne Basic Operation The basic building blocks of a superheterodyne-based radio consist of an antenna, mixer local oscillator, intermediate frequency (IF) narrow band filter, IF amplifier, demodulator, audio amplifier and speaker. The antenna picks up the entire radio frequency (RF) broadcast band, of which we are interested in AM broadcast frequencies. Therefore the antenna signal, which we will designate Sp(t), is really the superposition of the entire broadcast AM band Sa(t) = Y [1 + mi(t)] Aicos(wit) (9.1) where Ajcos(wit) represents the i’th carrier signal, and m,(t) represents the modulation of the ith carrier. Of course, the modulation contains the audio information. The sum is over all frequencies in the AM bandFigure 9.1: Block diagram of supetheterodyne receiver The next basic elements are the mixer and local oscillator, which are probably the key components of the superheterodyne. The mixer takes the RF signals from the antenna and multiplies them with the signal of the local oscillator Szo(2), where Si(t) = Beos(wrt) (9.2) (This local oscillator signal is produced by the receiver circuit, and has a oscillating frequency which is variable.) The product of the local oscillator and the antenna signals is Sx (t) x Se(t) = FAB [1 + mi(t)] cos(uxt)cos(wrt) (9.3) Using a trigonometric identity we realize Silt) x Salt) = 2 DAL + m,(t)] {cos (wit — wit) + coswt +wrt)} (9.4) Thus, by multiplying each input RF carrier by a local oscillator, each carrier is transformed into two signals: one at the sum of the two frequencies and another at the difference. So, coming out of the mixer are all the original carriers shifted up and down by the local oscillator frequency. After the RF and local oscillator signals are mixed, they are input into a very narrow (high Q) bandpass filter. The filter has a fixed resonant frequency which is called the intermediate frequency or IF. For AM broadcast, this IF is usually taken to be 455kHz. Since AM stations are separated by 10kHz, the bandwidth of this of the filter has to be less than 10kHz. This filtering is nicely achieved with ceramic filters, which are readily avzilable for about $3.00, that have bandwidth of approximately 8kHz Tuning the receiver is accomplished by changing the frequency of the local oscillator. This can be understood by observing Equation (9.4). This equation says that a signal composed of numerous components is incident on the filter. However, the filter will only pass the RF component for particular value of i = io such that (wie — wy) © 2n455kHz or (wo + w,) © 2n455kHz. All other components will be severely attenuated. Thus, by 2 TOP Kem aychanging the value of the local oscillator wz allows a different component of the RF pass through the filter. Since the filter is narrow, usually only one component can pass through for a given setting (or tuning) of the local oscillator. This setting will correspond to a particular carrier frequency which is turn is produced by a particular broadcasting station. After the carrier is selected and shifted to the IF frequency, it can be expressed as: Sio(t) = Avo [1 + mio(t)] cos(27455 x 10°t) (9.5) The amplitude of the selected signal is then increased by the IF amplifier. Ideally, this amplifier provides large gain at frequencies of 455kHz, and zero gain at all other frequencie: This type of amplifier is referred to as a narrow band amplifier. After a particular frequency is selected and amplified, it is then demodulated to extract the audio information which is represented by mj, The demodulation is usually accomplished by a diode peak detector circuit. The audio amplitude and power are then increased by an audio frequency amplifier. The audio signal is then output to the speaker. 9.3 Mixer ‘The mixer takes two AC signals and multiplies them. There are many ways to make a mixer. In the previous lab, where you constructed a transmitter, you made a modulator. Actually, to achieve mixing, you can actually use the same type of dif-amp based cireuit that you used for the modulator. This is because both modulating and mixing really just takes two signals and multiplies them together. ‘To achieve mixing with this configuration, one usually applies the incoming RF signal to one of the transistors of the differential pair, while the local oscillator is applied to vary the current source, In this way, the small RF signal is both amplified and mixed. 9.4 Narrow Band Filter As mentioned above, one of the best ways to achieve narrow band filtering is with ceramic filter specially designed to resonate at the AM IF (435KHz). Alternatively, one can construct a high-Q RLC circuit with bandwidth of less than 10KHz. The figure below shows a typical narrow-band filter achieved by using a diff-amp to cascade two RLC circuits. When n identical narrow-band filters are cascaded the 3-dB bandwidth B is given by B= oven 7 (9.6) Where wp = ghz and Q = weCR One limitation of cascading identically tuned circuits is that the band-width quickly increases at as the frequency departs from resonance. To overcome this problem, stagger tuning can be used to achieve a much flatter, sharper response away from resonance. Touf te a Khe Figure 9.2: Narrow-band Filter achieve this stagger effect in the circuit above, the resonant frequencies of the two individual circuits would be offset by fe B B WL Wet es wy = Wy — Peet wa WhereB is the desired 3-dB bandwidth, and w» is the center frequency of the filter. (9.7) 9.5 RF Amplifier The RF amplifier is responsible for ensuring that the signal is large enough for eventual demodulation. Therefore, the AC output of the RF amp should be approximately 1.5V or more. Such amplification can be obtained with transistors, where the differential configura- tion is often most suitable. This can also be achieved using a high-speed op-amp. However, recall that these op-amps are often decompensated, and therefore may result in instability and oscillations. So, care must be taken if op-amps are used for the RF amp stage 9.6 Demodulator and Audio Amp The peak detector from your previous radio lab can be used as the demodulator. The demodulated signal can be amplified with the same audio power amp you used in your previous lab. 9.7 Assignment 1. Design a superheterodyne AM radio using SPICE. 2. As an input, use the signal from your transmitter that you made in the previous lab, (Implement that in SPICE). Take the value of the RF signal to be 1.0mV, and assume 4the audio is a single tone at IKHz. Tune your local oscillator so that the station you receive will have a carrier of 1MHz. . For the narrow-band filter, use a two-stage RLC circuit, like the one above. Put the IF frequency at 455K Hz. se SPICE to plot the input, output df the audio amp, output of the demodulator, input to the demodulator, in both the time and frequency domains